A new set of search assets will be needed to recover Flight MH370’s black box if the Australian authorities have indeed found debris from the missing aircraft.

Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said a multinational effort would have to be assembled to make such a recovery.

"We are looking at the possibility of sonar as mentioned earlier. The technology and assets that are available to a limited few.

"We are talking about towing 'ping locators' (with vessels). Not many countries have got that vessel or the capability to tow that sort of equipment," he said.

Although not mentioned by name, Hishammuddin was likely to be describing a towed arrays sonar system.

It comprises a set of highly sensitive underwater microphones that are dragged across the ocean with a cable several kilometres long to detect faint sounds without having it drowned out by engine noise from the towing vessel.

Its typical use is in underwater warfare for detecting the sounds of potentially hostile vessels - especially engine noise - but it can also be used to detect ultrasonic noise (pings) emitted by an aircraft’s black box.

The pings are triggered upon an aircraft’s impact, but it only has battery life to ping once a second for 30 days. Today is Day-13 of the search for MH370.

“After the 30 days is up, as what the French airline (Flight 447 searchers) had to go through, then we are looking at submarine technology.

“Before that becomes an issue, let me tell you that Malaysian submarines do not have that technology,” said Hishammuddin, who is also the defence minister.

'Air France crash similar'

He added that experts from the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety have been advising him on the matter. They had arrived to assist in the SAR effort since Monday.

Although the search for MH370 is often punctuated with false leads, Hishammuddin said the satellite images released by Australia today are the "most credible lead" because the sighting of the possible debris have been partially corroborated by other satellites.

Nevertheless, he said the search in the northern corridor is not being scaled down, only that the search in the south is being intensified.

He also cautioned that the link to the missing aircraft of the sighting reported by the Australians remains to be confirmed.

To a question why he often compared the search for MH370 to the search for Air France Flight 447, he replied that it is because the search has taken a long time, and the conditions in the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean are similar.

In 2009 the French airliner crashed into the Atlantic between the coasts of Brazil and Africa.

It took five days to find the first pieces of debris, and two years to find the main wreckage and black box.